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Lots happened in my life in the last four years. Interesting projects, great travels, countless encounters and good reading.

What has remained unabated, however, is my passion for education, learning and urbanism. So, the aim of this blog remains unchanged: to share stories around the phenomenon of learning in urban regions complemented with the ‘sauce’ of theories and discourses.

We all know that key aspects of our world are changing rapidly, and that at the same time, we are confronted with an extraordinary number of global challenges: Climate change, hunger, peace, health, economy, demografic shift, education, environmental degradation, urbanisation etc etc. Change and learning are closely connected: The need for new knowledge, new methods of problem solving and new cultures of collective learningare getting more attention in urban planning. In the last years, my conviction has grown, that new approaches in educational planning are converging with new cultures of learning in the urban planning, hence, I will stick on to the ‘imaginary’ I created in 2011: “EDUCATIONAL URBANISM”.

In the last months, however, another phenomenon has drawn my attention deeply: Digitalisation. In the meantime it has grown into a full fledged obsession. I think, besides obvious drivers such as food & water scarcity, geopolitical tensions, social polarisation etc., it will be digitalisation that will pose the most disruptive force for our civilisation and the planet at large in the 21st century. I have also come to fear that most countries of the world are completely unprepared for what is coming. And yes, I have caught myself joining in the chorus of the protagonists of the digital revolution in Silicon Valley: “It’s just the beginning…”

What makes Ørestad Gymnasium even more interesting is the larger rationale behind it. It has to be seen within the context of the socio-economic transformation that Denmark is undergoing and also within the urban context of Ørestad, a showpiece of Nordic urban innovation. Education plays a central role on this urban arena.

The idea behind the new large-scale urban development in Copenhagen,is to catalyse the transformation of the Danish economy from industry-based to knowledge-based economy (will write later more about the so called “knowledge-based urban development”). It’s part of the bi-national economic zone created with Malmö in Sweden. The cities are connected with the fabulous Øresund Bridge.

On a strip of 600m x 5 km, and an area of 310 ha, Ørestad will have three million indoor square metres; house 20 000 inhabit­ants; provide 60 000 jobs and offer education to20,000 students. The strong presence of education in Ørestad is deliberate . The Ørestad Gymnasium, the IT-University, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DBC, an beautiful student’s hostel, the University of Copenhagen, Apple and others work together in close cooperation in the development process (‘Triple Helix’).

There is intense spatial closeness between the media industry, education and business organizations on the strip – not to forget cool housing! The awesome IT-Universityspecializing in multimedia is just one stop away from the Ørestad Gymnasium(with the driverless sky-train). And hardly three walking minutes away from the IT-University is another awesome building – the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DBC built by Jean Nouvel. The students of the IT-University get job offers at the DBC while still at school … also, some companies have their seats at the top floor of the university. This is where students can make their first encounter with the professional world, easing the school to employment transition.

The DBC building comprises four large buildings and a public concert house (build by Jean Nouvel), which houses a world-class recording studio in its basement. Together with the film-cluster mushrooming around the Danish film director Lars van Trier, Copenhagen is ambitiously positioning itself as a world ‘Media-City’ – much to the joy of the students.

All of this makes it a case for my argument on ‘educational urbanism’ – urban development where educational planning converges with urban planning…

In November 2012, WISE presented its WISE Book 2012 “Learning a Living” in Doha, Qatar. The book looks into the relationship between education, innovation and the world of work. After surveying 100 programmes, it identified fifteen high-impact radical innovation projects addressing the issue learning for work. It’s not just a collection of best practices – it tells their compelling stories. The book will be available on Amazon from March 2013.

Watch the video of the presentation made by the lead author of the book, the brilliant Valerie Hannon, director of The Innovation Unit in Britain (I remember being impressed by Ms Hannon at the OECD conference at my university in Vienna back in 2011).

She does a great job here by presenting some of the key projects from the book, while putting them in the context of a general message, which she unfolds along her presentation on the background. You can also listen to Reza, a well known National Geography photographer, who shot the photos.

The projects come from a broad variety of countries (like the USA, Morocco, Brazil, Kuwait, Nicaragua and others) showing many types of innovations. Ms Hannon underlines, that even though it’s a beautiful book, it’s not for the ‘coffee table’. It puts forward an argument about ‘learning for work’ (not ‘training for work’), which the authors believe has major implications for ‘learning’ in general.

In their methodology, the researchers put three questions:

1) What’s happening to the world of work?

2) What’s happening to the workforces and their needs?

3) How should learning be organised to meet those needs?

The problem they saw was that:

a) the picture of the world of work ‘has changed beyond recognition’,

b) the needs of workforces (that is of all citizens) which have changed too;

c) but learning hasn’t changed in terms of its organisation or design to meet those needs.

With this book as a backdrop, the ambivalent position of educational planners between the ‘market needs’ approach and the ‘liberal education’ approach, especially on the background of radical economic changes, really needs special attention. I’ll make a posting on that soon…

Back to the book, from the innovative projects chosen, the book picks up lessons from their

a) pedagogy;

c) their approach to curriculum;

d) their approach to assessment;

e) what is ‘intrinsically fascinating about these practices and how can they be scaled up.

Doing the book had ‘a profound effect’ on Valerie Hannon and her team. In talking to learners worldwide, again and again, the message they were hearing was that …

“The education system for the most part is not a part of the solution, its part of the problem”

It was ‘a shocking finding’, she said.

I draw the rationale of the book from her comment: “…the whole piece how people are educated to learn a living has significant implications on how we organise learning in totality.”

They looked into projects that addressed people from age 4 to age 95 (!). However, someone asked Valerie: “Why stop at 95?” : )) I wont tell you more…enjoy this wonderful presentation full of surprises and inspiring sparks !!!

Visit a session on ‘Education and Communiy’- Fostering local developmentat the last WISE conference in Doha in Nov 2012. There were representatives from Haiti, Qatar, Canada and Brazil.

I found it particularly interesting to listen to the experiences of the Brazilian participant, Ms.Natacha Costa, a psychologist and executive director of Apprendiz. She started working in a small community in 1997 in Vila Madalena in Sao Paulo and helped to develop an idea that led to the creation of a school model they call “Learning Neighborhoods” (Bairro Escolas).

Their idea of ‘connecting schools with the communities’ has spread now to some 32 000 (!) schools all over Brazil. It has become a powerful idea, radically transforming some of the old notions about learning and the role of schools.

Rod from British Columbia also said, there should be more ‘white space’ where teachers and students identify the needs of the community; also interesting for policy makers and implementation theorists, he spoke about the ‘social license’, saying“…instead of ‘implementation models’, we ar talking about ‘affiliation models’: how to get people to affiliate to those larger ideas which transcend politics…THAT becomes a social license.” This is to avoid getting ‘more of the same’…

But, here are some of Natacha’s comments (It gets interesting after 29:00 minutes):

(29:00 min) “…communities can only be engaged with something that is meaningful for them…( takes cue from the ‘African saying’ “it takes a village to raise a child”.

…We do not need more of the same…”schools do not have the monopoly of knowledge any more…they are more facilitators of development process…they have to be connected to the issues that are meaningful to the communities that they are based on…systematize what the people are discussing and what children are interested about…that’s the new role of schools…we have to learn how to build knowledge, how to learn and not just get information…32 000 schools have embarked upon creating neighbourhood school …each community with a different ideas and different ways of doing it … there is no prescription…only guidelines, themes & project that make sense to them … they have to be developed by themselves …”

(36.40 min) Then she makes a pretty powerful statement: “Education is not about preparation for life…we usually work with that …most countries work with that…preparing kids for life… we hear that all the time in Brazil … what we notice in the community based approach is that, they are already living … they are alive…they have ideas, they have a background, they have social networks, they have interests, they have knowledge … kids have knowledge, they are competent, they can do thing … Working with the idea of preparing for life is like working with them like they were rats in a lab.”

She then speaks about how teachers become a part of the learning process:“…Sometimes what happens in Brazil is that teachers often have no idea about the lives of the kids, what is going on in the community, so they cannot connect to those kids … (…”There is a programme in Brazil where the teachers go to the kids’ homes, and many, many, many of them come back and say ‘I had no idea how they lived…I often told them ‘you haven’t learned’…but then they see that they had no space to learn… for example because is there is a TV always running in the same room”…)… so by this idea of getting connected, by knowing them…knowing who are these kids, teachers become part of the learning process…”

(50:00 min) “Education is not like cooking…you cannot put the ingredients together…put it in the oven and it is finished…it is a complex issue… so we try understand and explain what we can get in 1 year… in 4 years…10 yrs … and to see it as a process. In our experimentation we try to organize that…what are the goals and what can we get in these periods, so people can see what is happening in a process that takes time, so that they can see things are advancing…it is very important to bring to the community some visual marks … communication is an important process … and it is politically very important as well … they did such visualizations in public space … so that they can see what’s going on, because this social capital process can be very silent … sometime u don’t see it happening … Once a visitor went to Apprendiz… and said “what is learning neighbourhood? I thought there is something going on here?!”

“There are relationships here … you cannot see the network” … “…these are some of the strategies we have been developing.” (transcribed from the online video by the author, slight language changes were made):

Finland is hyped for having the best school system in the world. In 2010, Tony Wagner, of Harvard, was invited by the Finland National Board of Education to share his ideas about education. Bob Compton, best known for his film “Two Million Minutes”, sent a film crew with Tony and shadowed him as he visited schools, met teachers, parents, and students….the film is at last online on Vimeo! Enjoy the great documentary !!

If you want to read some more before you watch the film go to Daily Kos, there is a good summary written by “teacherken”.

Here’s an excerpt:

1. Finland does not have high stakes tests
2. Finland worked to develop a national consensus about its public schools
3. Having made a commitment to its public schools, Finland has few private schools.
4. When asked about accountability, Finns point out that they not only do not have tests, they do not have an inspectorate. They find that trusting people leads to them being accountable for themselves.
5. Finland does not have incredibly thick collections of national standards. They have small collections of broadly defined standards, and allow local implementation.
6. Qualifying to become a teacher is difficult.
7. Teachers are well trained, well supported, and given time to reflect about what they are doing, including during the school day.
8. Finns start school later in life than we do
9. Finnish students do little homework.
10. There is meaningful technical education in Finnish Schools

The Floating University may be the beginning of yet another way to reach out to bigger number of students. Famous profs from Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League universities give visually appealing lectures that can be seen on your laptops or tablets anywhere, anytime…